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Marcel and His Father
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The text reads:
“Your host, fun-loving Frenchman Marcel Chabernaud, is proud, very proud, of the Tenth Debands Annual Award he won in 1960, but he is more proud of his stubborn, life-loving father who was very successful wine merchant of Rochechouart (roh-shuh-schwaarrh), France.
Marcel’s eyes sparkle and he laughs loudly when he tells you how his father, Leonce Chabernaud, Sr., a Gallic with an unusual flair for the dramatic, jolted his hometown, the Priests, and France with the announcement he would be entombed in a concrete wine barrel on wheels when he died.
Ignoring the inflamed protests of Rochechouart’s officialdom and the Priests, with his own hands Leonce started construction of his tomb in the late 1930’s. He had to fight City Hall and everyone else for the privilege of being buried as he wished, but he won. He owned the cemetery lot.
Finishing his wine barrel vault, Leonce called together a host of friends and they celebrated the occasion with a wine party atop his future “home.”
When the Germans conquered France during World War II, they “asked” Leonce to desist from his wine cask burial vault idea. He clamped his jaws and ground his teeth. “Mais non!” he said firmly.
After the war he was faced with a crisis. Leonce discovered that water from a damp cemetery was seeping into the cask. Sacre bleu! He never wanted anything to do with water, so he destroyed the whole thing, wine barrel and all, and rebuilt it in such a manner that he was sure it would be water proof.
In his will, the wine merchant stipulated that his funeral services would be a time of drinking wine and merriment, not a time of mourning. To be sure there would be enough wine for the occasion, he placed a case of wine in the vault for each year in which his children was born.
A formal application by Leonce for a telephone to be installed in his wine barrel mausoleum so he could “call his friends if it became necessary,” again infuriated the forces of society. The phone company refused his request.
“He was only having his fun,” Marcel explains, grinning. “He was a real character, but smart, very smart. And this application got him lots and lots of publicity.”
ed. note: Fifty-six years after his death, even.In 1953, death finally caught up with the life-loving wine Chabernaud, Sr. And, as his will decreed, the “vault” yielded up its treasure cache of wine. There was much drinking and laughter and singing.
“The Priests were there,” remembers Marcel, “but only as friends. Father believed in God, but not in a middle man. There were no services, no flowers. Everyone had a good time drinking wine and singing, just like father wanted it.”
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A pioneer in end-of-life planning.